"You can't fix it. You can't make it go away.
I don't know what you're going to do about it,
But I know what I'm going to do about it. I'm just
going to walk away from it. Maybe
A small part of it will die if I'm not around
feeding it anymore."
--Lew Welch

How to tell a story

Tuesday, April 12, 2016

"All gone. All used up."

My best friend Dick (Hooker in my work) died in a hospice in northern Idaho in 1998. Driving home from our wedding in Portland, he felt pain. He had pancreatic cancer and died before the end of the year.

On the last day of my visit, he gave me a goofy grin and said, "All gone. All used up." He was talking about the Life Force, I knew, telling me, What's a guy to do? I kissed him on the forehead, and he said, "Beautiful." I went home, and he died the next day. I scattered his ashes with his mother and two sons off of White Bird Hill above Salmon, Idaho.

"All gone. All used up." I know what he means. I'm not empty but I'm very aware of the bottom of the tank. My goal is to keep the doctors from messing with me and let Nature take its course.

Earlier blog (archived)

ENTERTAINMENTS

Career Support

"Charles' impact on Northwest literature and theater over the past twenty-plus years is impressive. As a critic I've followed his work since the early 1980s, and no playwright has had such an important or long-lasting effect on this community's cultural life." --Bob Hicks, Senior Critic (retired), The Oregonian

"During the years we've worked together, I feel Charles was the clearest and most important theatre voice in Oregon." --Steve Smith, Artistic Director (retired), Theatre Workshop

"This play has balls!" -- Anonymous young man, shouting in the dark before curtain call for Country Northwestern.

2006
Finalist, Mystery of the Year (Foreword Magazine), for Dead Body In A Small Room.

2007
Begin making digital films. Deconstructing Sally, perhaps the best of the bunch ("Deconstructing Sally has voice: It’s a good example of how skillful and individualistic democratic filmmaking can be.")

2008Changing Key, a video hyperdrama and lecture-demonstration presented to national hypertext conference.